Des Moines worker moving to Germany for better health care

I was chatting with Matthew Peirce about being laid off from his job at a small insurance company in Des Moines recently, when he dropped this bombshell:

“I’m moving to Germany,” he said, noting his plan was to leave in May. “I’m done.”

His job was automated out, but he’s not upset with the company as much as he hates that changing jobs in America means finding one with good health insurance, too.

And he knows, from spending 18 months in Germany years ago, that he can get better care for less money in that country—without it being tied to where he’s working.

“I’m leaving because this system is broken, so I’m not gonna participate anymore,” Peirce said. “Germany’s getting my work and the US isn’t; too bad.”

Peirce has Crohn’s disease. To treat it costs $85,000 per year—more than two-and-a-half times his salary.

“My employer was paying, every pay period, over $350 on my behalf to an insurance company. And I was paying $60, so I could go and pay more money to go see a doctor to pay more money for treatments,” he said. “I’m like, what? I get to pay money to have the privilege of paying more money? This is dumb.”

Peirce recently went to a town hall on healthcare with Sarah Trone Garriott, running for Congress, and Elissa Slotkin, the new senator from Michigan, to ask them whether either wanted to make the system better here.

“Will the United States Congress ever decide to acknowledge the fact that, if this nation wants to remain competitive with the rest of the world, it must be willing to devise and implement a system where people do not go bankrupt seeking care and that is free of the shackle of employer-based insurance?” he asked them. (He noted he was “less than impressed” with their answers.)

And while it’s not Peirce’s only consideration for moving, he said it’s in part so he can find better care.

“I’m going to a place where they have figured this out and no one goes bankrupt,” he said. “Like, is it that hard?”

In Germany, he told me, he had no waiting period to be enrolled in care, no co-pays, no deductible, “no in-network, out-of-network bullshit.” To pay for health care, the country institutes a 7.5% payroll tax on workers, plus an employer contribution of 7.5%.

“I went to the dentist, I went to the dermatologist, I went to my general practitioner, I got X-rays. Cost me nothing,” Peirce said. “Like, nothing. Because it was paid out of my payroll tax.”

He thinks the US could do the same here—if there was the political will to do so.

“If everybody pays a little bit, prices can come down. And [prices] need to be regulated,” he said. “Those are the two things, really, that will solve the issue of people going bankrupt and dying because they can’t pay.”

But he’s tired of waiting.

“Everybody else has it,” he said. “Why can’t we?”